Just eight years ago, I had never even heard of the term “peer review.” I often wondered how scientific knowledge found its way into classroom textbooks. Who decides what to include and whether it’s accurate?
During my PhD, I first experienced peer review and how it works. It made sense then to me. scientific peers are the ones who evaluate the validity of findings and determine whether they should be published.
Here’s a typical overview of how the scientific peer review process works:

But was it always like this? How was the peer review process in the 19th century or before that?
History of Peer Review
Notably, the term ‘peer review’ was introduced only in the early 1970s. The journal Nature made the peer-review process mandatory only in 1973.1 The very first journal (that is still in print!) was launched in 1665 by the Royal Society in London known as Philosophical Transactions (Phil Trans R Soc B).
In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (Or before), the scientific community comprised a small group of men and women. They were not even known as scientists but as natural philosophers. When they found something new and interesting, they wrote personal letters to each other, conveyed ideas through public and private presentations, and of course by writing books (Origin of Species by Darwin or Principia of Mathematica by Newton).
Henry Oldenburg2, a German Philosopher is known as the creator of the modern-day peer review process. In 1660, when the Royal Society was formed in London to promote natural philosophy, Henry Oldenburg was appointed as the first secretary of the society (almost like the Editor of a journal these days). He was the first one to send scientific articles for external review (though it was not the exactly same as it is today but reviewers were a small number of society members)
In the 17th or early 18th century, the decision to accept scientific findings was mostly taken by the Editor himself or a small number of peers appointed by the editor. A story in that era is that when Newton submitted his manuscript ‘New Theory About Light and Colors‘ to Philosophical Transactions journal, Oldenburg (the editor) sent it to three fellows of the Royal Society, which also included Robert Hooke.
Newton did not like the critical analysis of his work by Robert Hooke.3 Thereafter, Newton never published any of his work in journals again and instead chose books as the preferred method for publishing his scientific work. Some people even blame Oldenburg for the rivalry between Newton and Hooke. Although that may not be entirely true. Henry Oldenburg merely tried to implement a gatekeeper mechanism for scientific literature.4
Today more than 2 million articles are published in more than 20000 journals, by a mechanism pioneered by Henry Oldenburg.5
The Business Around Academic Publishing
Many believe that the business model of journal publishing houses is the best.
In most businesses, enterprises/start-ups have to create first value by designing a good enough product that has a demand. The customer then pays them to buy that product in the hope it will improve some aspect of their lives. That’s how most businesses generate revenue.
But in academic publishing, the journals themselves don’t create any value, rather it’s the researchers working in the academic institutions or industries who create value by discovering original and valuable research findings.
Who are then the customers here?
The same people who create value are also the customer in this case.
What do then journals do?
The primary job of academic journals is to act as a gatekeeper. To validate if the new research findings are indeed worth publishing or not. Things get more interesting here.
How do journals decide if something is worth publishing?
By sending unpublished manuscripts to experts for review. At this point, anyone unfamiliar with peer review would think that journals must be spending a lot for peer review.
But no. Journals don’t have to pay anything for peer review. People do it free of cost. In fact, sometimes researchers have to pay to publish their work and make it open access. It is mind-boggling how value creators themselves pay money to publish their work and then again pay to read those or similar works.
But Why it is so?
People that’s how things have been for more than a century. And these days academic credibility depends to a great extent on publishing papers in top journals. Researchers need to publish them to progress in their careers and libraries have to subscribe to all relevant journals.
Also, people (experts) who review unpublished manuscripts are the same group of people who send their manuscripts to journals as well for publication. It’s like my papers are reviewed free of cost so I should review others’ papers free of cost as well. Besides, researchers want to work and publish and not be involved against any set pattern (even if it is not good).6
The point is not just that people who review papers should be paid (maybe they should be paid). The key point is how academic journals make billions exploring this model. The only cost for journals is keeping a team of staff, editors, associate editors, and the production of published manuscripts. Journals charge a hefty fee to read published works. More than researchers, librarians know it much better. One can also phrase it as journals making profits by restricting access to knowledge and ideas.
50 or 100 years ago, people who used to publish in academic journals were smaller (as the community was smaller) but today it has grown significantly. The academic publishing industry has a large financial turnover. Today it is a 19 billion dollar business. Just look at the revenue of the top 5 academic publishing houses.

Just Elsevier alone has 3.9 billion dollars of revenue followed by Springer Nature. The profit margin for these journal publishing houses is reaching close to 40%, surpassing the profit margin of companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Coca-Cola.7
The first person to think about this business model was a non-scientist, Robert Maxwell– a British publisher, politician, and notorious businessman. He became rich by publishing science in journals (that he bought).
How Publication in Journals Influence Actual Science
Where did Einstein publish his work on the photoelectric effect or did Max Planck publish the first evidence of Quantum mechanics?
Well, who cares right? It is the actual science that makes their work great not where they are published.
Somehow the same is not true today. Journal reputation and the greatness of a work have almost become synonymous. If you publish your research in Nature or Science or Cell, by default most people will assume it is great work (even without reading or understanding a single paragraph).
Of course, the chances are pretty high that a published work in Nature most likely be great but the problem becomes when the the journal name gets all the attention and not the work itself.
Everyone will congratulate you for publishing in Nature or similar journals. Still, most of them will hardly realize (or try to realize) what makes your work worthy of remembering and discussing (even people who are working in the same field as you). You see, everyone remembers more the journal name and less the work itself.
You might think how have journals positioned themselves in a hierarchy?
By inventing metrics like impact factor, eigen factor, h-index, acceptance rate, etc. So Nature or Science is a top journal because they have a pretty high impact factor and the lowest acceptance rate.
The inventor of the journal impact factor, Eugene Garfield probably had never thought that impact factors would be considered in the scientific community as a criterion for judging the quality of a scientist and determining the provision for research grants. The primary aim of creating the impact factor was to assist research libraries in distinguishing between journals when making subscription decisions.8
The bigger question is how impact factors influence science today.
If society begins to judge a scientist by the name of the journal in which their work is published, rather than the quality and significance of their research, it sets a precedent where everyone strives to align with the latest trends that favor high-impact journals. That means scientists may focus on producing work that fits the specific criteria or hot topics preferred by prestigious journals, rather than pursuing genuinely meaningful and innovative research.
We observe this trend today, where funding agencies tend to support researchers with more publications in high-impact journals, and hiring committees prioritize candidates based on where their work has been published. This shift in focus can undermine the true value of scientific inquiry and discovery.
Eventually, scientists may lose interest in pursuing the most worthwhile problems for societal progress if their work is not valued based on its merit but rather on the prestige of the journals in which it is published.
In an ideal world, if I conduct worthwhile research, top journals would naturally publish my work. However, both humans and the peer review process are imperfect. Publishing in prestigious academic journals depends on numerous factors beyond the quality of the research. These factors include the geography and reputation of the corresponding author, the integrity of the reviewers and editors, the ability to effectively present the work (its “sellability”), and many more.
I believe that chasing publication in top journals is detrimental in the long term, as it will eventually influence how I approach scientific research, and not always for the better. Instead of following my curiosity and intuition, I may end up conforming to the trends favored by specific journals. The responsibility largely lies with policymakers, who must ensure that good research is rewarded, regardless of where it is published.
I once got a chance to talk with a renowned scientist and asked him ‘How do you judge or decide who is a better scientist in a short period?‘
He replied- ‘By talking with him about his scientific ideas, I don’t care where he has published‘
Anyone would be thrilled to publish their research in a top journal, which many people consider the best based on impact factor. My only wish would be to remember those works more for their novelty and usefulness, and less because they are published in a specific journal.
The most important thing we as individuals can do to progress Science and therefore society is this- don’t judge research by the impact factor of journals or don’t judge scientists (or any researcher) by his/her h-index. The best way to judge a scientist is to read his work (done over a decade or half), listen to his talk and ideas, and talk to his alumni or with the person himself if possible. Try to combine these and then perhaps you will get a more comprehensive and fair assessment.
Jonathan Chernoff, an American scientist, expressed in one of his perspective articles9
“What, then, is your paper worth? In the long run, its chief value is what the world makes of it; that is, a discovery of importance, whether delivered to the public with a blare of sirens in a top-tier journal or with a quiet plop in an obscure blog, will in time enter the wider scientific world as a supporting strut for an existing paradigm or a building block for a new one.”
References
- Peer-Review: Wikipedia ↩︎
- Henry Oldenburg: Wikipedia ↩︎
- A letter of Mr. Isaac Newton ↩︎
- Why Blame Oldenburg? ↩︎
- What are Journals For? ↩︎
- The highly profitable but unethical business of publishing medical research ↩︎
- The Money behind Academic Publishing ↩︎
- The history and meaning of the journal impact factor ↩︎
- How much is my paper worth4 ↩︎